See “‘Frauds’ granted refugee status as determination process breaks down”, by Greg Sheridan, in The Weekend Australian:
Australia’s refugee determination process has broken down completely, admitting large numbers of people whose claims to refugee status are fraudulent.
The claims come from a former senior Immigration Department official who says the system favours those who tell lies over those who tell the truth, is easily scammed and has become utterly dysfunctional.
“Having considerable experience interviewing and assessing boat arrival claims, I can confidently say ... that we are approving large numbers of people who are fabricating claims,” he wrote in an unpublished account of the process, obtained by The Weekend Australian.
“Indeed, the current refugee determination system works in favour of those who are most adept at spinning a yarn.” The former official talks of asylum-seekers “enhancing and inventing” claims that satisfy one level or another of the multi-layered refugee status determination and appeals procedures.
A spokesman for Immigration Minister Brendan O’Connor said there was no processing of any asylum-seeker who arrived after August 13 last year. This halt was to give effect to the Houston committee’s recommendation that those who arrive by boat should secure “no advantage” over those awaiting resettlement in refugee camps overseas. […]
The Weekend Australian also interviewed a former member of the Refugee Review Tribunal, who worked on the independent merits review processes for asylum-seekers.
He said that asylum-seekers on Christmas Island told him they had simply copied their claims from other applicants who had been successful.
The former tribunal member said that transcripts of court cases in which asylum-seeker appeals had been upheld circulated widely on Christmas Island so that claimants, and their advocates, could see what testimony had been successful. “I would sometimes receive a completely compelling story that was impossible to refuse,” the former tribunal member said. “The problem is I would receive 100 other identical stories with only the names changed.”
He said that administrative pressures constituted an effective bias in favour of accepting claims to refugee status. If he gave a negative decision on an asylum-seeker’s claim on appeal, he would need to write an extensive judgment because it would inevitably be appealed to the courts. If he approved an asylum-seeker’s claim, he could write a pro-forma decision as it would never be reviewed.
He also reported that middle-class Iranian asylum-seekers often arrived in Christmas Island barely a week after leaving Tehran and exhibited an aggressive “entitlement mentality”.
“I had a colleague producing five ‘yes’ decisions a day,” the former tribunal member said. “The (Immigration) department loved him because of the numbers of cases he could clear.”
The former Immigration Department officer said that asylum-seekers would communicate on the phone and the internet with potential asylum-seekers in their home countries to brief them on the best explanations to use in order to get a favourable outcome.
This backs up testimony from former minister Philip Ruddock that recordings of interviews by Australian officials with asylum-seekers were sold in Asian markets as helpful preparation for people intending to make illegal journeys to Australia.
“I believe that Australia should be assisting people in overseas refugee situations through financial, logistical and diplomatic assistance but we cannot solve these situations by the unrestricted entry of people, most of whom are not from the most disadvantaged strata of their societies,” the former immigration official wrote.
He also concluded that “literally millions” of people could successfully claim asylum in Australia if they could get here, if the refugee convention were interpreted the way the UN says it should be.
It is well past time that we discarded such a fractured, rotten system—predicated on flawed thinking and a foolish, fawning adherence to conventions of the corrupt United Nations—and formulated a rational policy based on first principles and enlightened self-interest.
Greg Sheridan also writes, in “UN convention turns Australia into a magnet for asylum-seekers”, that the Refugee Convention is a problem; yet he argues against ditching it:
Greg Sheridan also writes, in “UN convention turns Australia into a magnet for asylum-seekers”, that the Refugee Convention is a problem; yet he argues against ditching it:
Is the Refugee Convention itself now the problem? The convention dates from 1951 and was designed to deal with people fleeing persecution across land borders in Europe. It had the Holocaust in mind. The idea was that if someone, generally a government, was trying to kill you because of your race or religion and you fled to escape death, you would not then be forced back to your persecutor.
Sadly, like most things associated with the UN, it has grown into a sort of grotesque parody of itself, with vast unintended consequences.
The actual wording of the convention is not too bad. The obligations it imposes on signatories are reasonably limited. The main one is that a country may not return a refugee to the place from which he has fled persecution. Nothing John Howard did, nothing that Tony Abbott proposes, contravenes the convention.
It is clear, and sometimes explicit, in the convention’s wording that it envisages people fleeing directly from persecution in one country to haven, temporary or permanent, in an adjacent neighbour. So how is it that, ostensibly under the auspices of the convention, there are now Iranians, Lebanese, Palestinians, Somalis, Afghans, Pakistanis and others arriving in Australia's north and claiming to be refugees? […]
The convention talks of people directly fleeing persecution. But the folks arriving in Australia use, or misuse, a technicality in the convention. […]
But the convention operates now in three ways that are extremely bad for Australia.
First, because it is a treaty we have signed, it has been substantially imported into our domestic law. But because some of its language is imprecise and aspirational, an imperial judiciary can steal much of the power from the parliament by interpreting such language expansively.
Second, Australia’s status as a signatory to the convention acts as an enormously powerful magnet, attracting all manner of aspirational immigrants, drawn by Australia's material riches and generous welfare, who can then use the convention to qualify for immigration status they would never get otherwise.
And third, it allows the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to play a wholly inappropriate part in our domestic politics. […]
So, should we leave the convention altogether? I don't think so. It would be too difficult and controversial and we would still face the obligations of customary law anyway. But we should completely decouple domestic law from the convention.
